


Maybe They Aren't the Problem

by violetsarefuckingpurple



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Angst, But please give it a try, F/F, I Don't Even Know, I Tried, Introspection, Many many spoilers, Spoilers, Super angsty, a chance at redemption, based on episode 13 season 4, unedited and probably complete garbage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 10:04:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21390361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violetsarefuckingpurple/pseuds/violetsarefuckingpurple
Summary: This is basically just a big mess of Catra slowly realizing that she has fucked some shit up in her life. Takes place in season 4, post Scorpia (SPOILER ALERT) leaving and then primarily in the last episode. This was just kinda what was running through my head while I watched.
Relationships: Adora/Glimmer (mentioned), Catra/Scorpia (She-Ra)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 79





	Maybe They Aren't the Problem

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah so, I hope you like it, please comment if you want to but be gentle. This is probably not my best work because I haven't looked it over or anything, just kinda went for it. Golly this season was intense. I'm so proud of Scorpia, and really I just want her all the best, but I do hope that Catra finally get's her redemption arch next season and can begin to try and make up for all the bad stuff she has done.

Scorpia is gone.  _ She’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone. _ And never coming back. Like everyone else, Entrapta, Shadow Weaver... Like Adora. She’s gone. Catra gradually becomes aware that she is shaking, clutching the shattered remains of Scorpia’s force captain badge so tightly that the metal stings her hand. That’s almost funny. She feels weirdly still, numb, and yet she’s shaking. Fine.  _ Fine, fine, fine _ . Who cares? Just another abandoner to add to the list, Catra knows how to respond to that. She’s had the training. She contorts her face and growls, and anger is such a familiar shield. She bears the emotion as she always has, her shouts and snarls armour strong and safe around every secret facit of her vulnerabilities. 

_ (It feels heavier now, for some reason. Once she had borne her steely armour with such fire-flooded ferocity, it had been… exhilarating, in a way. Worth fighting for if only for the thrill, the  _ ** _purpose_ ** _ . Now… she doesn’t know. Her shoulders ache under some invisible burden she doesn’t understand.) _

_ _ She yells at Lonnie, Kyle, and Rogelio. She yells at everyone. And croons malice to Hordak. And it doesn’t matter, because none of  _ them  _ matter. And Double Trouble goes offline, but who cares? She is Catra. She is strong. She doesn’t need anybody.  _ (Which is good because everyone leaves her in the end.)  _

Entrapta haunts her dreams, she has been for months. Adora has been haunting her even longer. They call to her, so desperate and afraid, and she doesn’t care to listen to the warnings they give her. It’s never what she wants to hear anyway, all the placating, it’s always for some higher cause than just wanting to make amends. Scorpia doesn’t call to her at all. Her eyes are nothing but sad when they meet Catra’s. She doesn’t need to beg for anything, any higher cause. So she doesn’t. And her quiet, steady voice is resigned when she speaks.

_ “You are a bad friend.” _

Catra stops going to bed. 

It’s better to pace and stare at screens till her eyelids twitch heavy and black against her blurry vision than hear those soft words and watch that familiar face drop into acceptance and sorrow. It’s better. And Catra does not need anyone, has never needed anyone. Least of all stupid Scorpia, who is clumsy and dopey and ruins everything. None of this is her fault, she knows. Everyone leaves her in the end so who cares what she does? She can do whatever the Hell she wants because there is no one to disappoint, not that she would care even if she did. And who cares if she is absolutely alone in the world because apparently Scorpia hadn’t been as loyal as she had thought she was. Catra certainly doesn’t care! And there is no one else to care for her so… that’s good. No one cares about what she does. Catra is  _ free _ .

Freedom, as it turns out, feels very much like a prison cell. Or a noose around her neck.

“Hey, Catra.”Adora croons. The sound is too slippery from her throat, all poison and honey in a way Catra had perfected.

“No. You can't do this! You can't come in and take this from me now!”

“Whoa, I knew this would get a rise out of you, but, still, you really are obsessed, aren't you, kitten?” Double Trouble morphs back into themself, reptilian and smirking, and something deep within Catra already knows that this is not a playful game of tricks. It is a cold hard war. “You know, it took me a while, but I finally figured out your character. You try so hard to play the big, bad villain, but your heart's never been in it, has it?”

“What? What are you? Stop! Stop it.”

“People have hurt you, haven't they? They didn't believe in you.” Shadow Weaver’s cold, disinterested voice echoes around her. 

“They didn't trust you.” Hordak’s deep mechanical growl— 

“Didn't need you. Left you.” Adora’s eyes are as dark and unforgiving and empty as the deep black water beneath a sheet of ice.

“But did you ever stop to think maybe they're not the problem?”

Catra can feel it coming before it even happens. The taunts are escalating, more and more personal, salt in so many wounds that Catra has tried  _ so hard _ to bandage with hatred. She knows what’s coming next. But that doesn’t soften the blow. 

“It's you. You drive them away, wildcat.” 

Catra has to admit Double Trouble is good at what they do; Scorpia’s expression is identical to the one she had had the last time Catra saw her. The one that whittles away at her in sleep (and in wakefulness, who is she kidding). Her dark eyes are not piercing, not even accusatory. They are calm glass, too slippery for Catra’s jagged armour to find purchase on. She can rage against Adora’s self-righteousness all she wants, she realizes, Catra will never be able to use her anger to defend herself from Scorpia’s  _ disappointment _ . Scorpia had been nothing but loyal. And it is Catra’s fault she is gone. Because in the soft lines of Scorpia’s face, both in memory and pasted on Double Trouble, there is only one thing as simply evident and Scorpia’s sadness. Truth.

Something deep with Catra, that she had never registered having but realizes now was exactly what she had been defending all this time, shatters into a million billion pieces that sink deep into her every organ. She is vaguely aware of Double Trouble explaining their betrayal, of the hot tears flowing down her face, but all she can really focus on is that image of Scorpia’s eyes. She feels like she kind of gets it now, in a sick way, too little too late and painful as a barbed wire tight around her heart. Catra is a broken and bitter person who had been so busy blaming her problems on everyone else that she had destroyed the one relationship she had that mattered. Scorpia is gone.  _ Gone, gone, gone _ . 

When Queen Glimmer arrives, Catra welcomes the promise of death with lowered eyes and slumped shoulders. Her armour sits heavy and broken around her shoulders, and any trace of fire in her lungs has long since smothered to ash. Glimmer doesn’t do anything, and when Catra raises her head just slightly to look at her, she is struck with the distinct sensation of sameness. Glimmer is alone too, it would seem. And yet she still cares. Wants to mend the shit she has broken.  _ (She cries Adora’s name, not an apology but an admission, and suddenly Catra thinks that while Glimmer has so many more than one important relationship, Adora might still be her Scorpia in the clench of her heart and the regret when it all goes south.)  _

And something in Catra — some lost pang of Adora’s friendship, or some united sense of loneliness from Glimmer’s quivering hands, or maybe just the memory of Scorpia’s disappointed eyes — forces her to her feet to run after the stumbling royal. That same something forces her forward when Hordak Prime orders Glimmer to be killed. It urges up this tiny ember still living in Catra’s chest and fans the flame, unsmothered by her heavy armour of anger which has shattered around her. It is protectiveness, she realizes, the need to keep Glimmer safe for Adora’s sake or Glimmer’s sake or Scorpia’s sake, she cannot tell. And it feels, maybe, like a chance of redemption.

  
  
  
  



End file.
